Humans have an obsession with wealth--how to amass it, the toys they can buy with it, and that warm, safe feeling of being swaddled in it.

For the nearly 10% of working Americans who are unemployed (and the many thousands more who may be hanging onto jobs by their fingernails), having a pile of money sounds like a high-class problem they'd be thrilled to have. But here’s the deeper truth: Getting rich is a result, not a reason--and the reasons really do matter, if happiness and fulfillment are your ultimate goals.

Warren Buffett once said this about wealth building: “Enjoy the process more than the proceeds.” How right he was. After working as a clinician and coach for super-successful people for the last 30 years, I have seen the damage wrought by the single-minded pursuit of money. Wealth in itself is not harmful; it's the why and how you go after it that can leave you frustrated at best and emotionally bankrupt at worst.

With that, here are ten horrible reasons, in and of themselves, to get rich:

1. It's a way to keep score.

Donald Trump, a man who compulsively asserts how smart or beloved he is in every conversation, repeatedly tells people, “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.” For once, The Donald is dead-on. Those who amass a fortune exclusively to best (or belittle) competitors inevitably find their endeavors dissatisfying. Making money for the sake of it isn't much different than, as the saying goes, shooting fish in a barrel. You get what you’re after, but when you do you feel, "Is that it?"

Image by scottfeldstein via Flickr

2. It will enhance my sense of self-worth.

Not only can't money buy happiness, it doesn’t do all that much for your self-esteem. That's because self-esteem (with all apologies to Oprah and the rest) derives in large part from how others react to us--and that reaction tends to change with the size of your wallet. It's a pernicious little paradox: If people learn that you are wealthy before they know you or work with you, they often are incapable of praising you lest the favorable feedback seem like syrupy ingratiation.

Take a former client of mine, whom I'll call Charlie. Charlie wanted to make his mark as a freelance gag writer; he also had a large trust fund and everyone knew it. To guard against being seduced by disingenuous feedback, Charlie would only take negative criticism to heart. Surprise: That steady diet of negativity made Charlie miserable over time. Charlie was accentuating the negative for obvious reasons, but he never learned to take pride in himself or in his work--even when his jokes were truly funny.

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3. It's liberating.

Think money will set you free? Make enough of it and you'll have to deal with what shrinks call "correspondence bias"--the tendency of people to form complex yet uninformed impressions based on a single attribute, i.e. your wealth. That sounds like it's their problem, when in fact it becomes your problem. Example: One of my clients, beloved for his cut-up personality, unhappily adopted a more demure version of himself after his company went public. "Now that I have money I cannot do [this or that]," he kept saying. "It wouldn't be fitting." Irony alert.